California Parents Blindsided

Quick – raise your hand if you think the state can do a better job of protecting your children than you can.

No parent in his or her right mind would answer “yes” to a question like that.

However, that was the way over 52 percent of California voters answered that question in Tuesday’s special election. They nixed Proposition 73, a constitutional amendment that would have given parents back their right to be notified before one of their children is given an abortion – a right that was taken away from them by activist judges on the state supreme court.

Many voters were confused by a massive disinformation campaign heavily bankrolled by the nation’s leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. The “Yes on 73” crowd managed to scrape up a little money for a few radio spots, while Planned Parenthood and company launched a TV campaign featuring Sen. Barbara Boxer, the queen of infanticide.

Yes, in the run up to this election, there was this woman who, in the U.S. Senate, had the gall to defend the grisly procedure of partial-birth abortion, on the boob tube in California defending robbing parents of their right to even know if a doctor is about to perform an abortion on one of their children.

She skillfully switched the issue from “parental rights” to one of “abortion rights.” The reality is that some parents don’t care if their daughters are out having sex. If their daughters get pregnant, they will gladly take them to abortion clinics. Proposition 73 would have done nothing to change that.

However, the majority of parents do care and they want and need the right to control their children’s health care. By the way, if there is a complication from an abortion, the parents are then called in to pick up the pieces … and the tab.

The “No on 73” crowd made voters believe that pregnant young girls would rather run for the coat hangers than have to face the two people who love them most in the world. Miraculously, the “No on 73” crowd got away with demonizing parents, and won!

Planned Parenthood and company argued that Proposition 73 could endanger girls who were victims of sexual or family abuse. Just the opposite is true. This parental notification amendment contained a judicial bypass (as all parental-involvement laws do) that would protect victims of sexual abuse and notify the proper authorities in such cases.

This campaign against parental involvement was not about the truth; however, it was about money. That’s because parental-involvement laws work. States that have them have experienced real reductions in pregnancies among minor girls. The less sexual activity among teens, the less abortions … and that means less money for Planned Parenthood and the rest of the nation’s pregnancy profiteers. That is why so much money was spent to defeat this ballot measure!

The dirty little secret is that most pregnant teens are impregnated by adults (who are not their parents) and abortion clinics don’t want to know. A recent study of over 46,000 pregnancies of school-age girls in California found that over two-thirds were impregnated by adults. These are child molestations and little or nothing is being done about them!

The message of Sen. Boxer and her colleagues to parents in this election should be clear to anyone who was paying attention: “You are too stupid, too feared and too abusive to be trusted with an important matter like your child’s health care. Leave it to the abortionist or the mother of the kid who knocked up your daughter or her adult molester. Now these are the people who really care about your child!”

Unfortunately, not enough of California’s parents were paying attention. Only about 44 percent of California’s registered voters bothered to show up at the polls or fill out an absentee ballot. In heavily conservative counties, the turnout was even less.

This was a special election called by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger with no statewide offices at stake. The majority of those who did turn out were angry members of the state’s employees unions who were anxious to defeat the governor’s plan to rein in spending and protect the sweetheart deals carved out by the unions with Schwarzenegger’s predecessor.

So parents were the biggest losers in this election and sadly most don’t even know what hit them.

Thirty-four states now have some type of parental-involvement law. The other 16 states need one. Hopefully California’s parents will suffer voters’ remorse and live to fight another day.